Because he was a detective. In the comics, Batman was modeled as much after Sherlock Holmes the scientist/crime-solver as Superman the costumed crime-fighter. Batman’s storylines were basically forensic mysteries: a crime would be committed and clues would be found, leading to a cat-and-mouse game with dastardly criminals, who like Batman lived on a higher plane of existence than us ordinary schmucks. Much of the action would take place in the Batcave, which was essentially a laboratory. There would be a eureka moment based on evidence, logical deduction and intuition.
Bale’s Batman, on the other hand, is for the most part a clobberer. Nearly every time we see him he’s punching somebody, and when he does speak it’s only a few hoarsely muttered words. Despite the couple of token scenes of Batman at his crime lab, wordlessly pulling miracles from some clue, Morgan Freeman does most of the brainy work.
Because it’s impossible for an actor to convey psychological depth in a superhero costume. There are a couple of reasons why comic books can develop characters with true depth despite the limitations of the medium. One is the episodic format. You can get way into a character’s head when you have 1,000 stories going back decades. The number of times Batman’s origin has been retold, for instance, and its layers upon layers of variations, elevate the story to myth. Repetition gives a depth each individual narrative episode cannot.
Second, the best comics embrace the medium’s limits. The gaps of meaning and plot between panels, the flatness of character and scene. The exaggeration of form, color and movement. We suspend our disbelief to a greater degree in comics than in most other media, which is the only thing that allows such silly characters and stories to make sense to us. But in a film, a guy in a cape and tights just looks ridiculous. He is limited by the physicality of the costume instead of being liberated by it.
Adam West never brought out our cognitive dissonance because he played to the silliness of the story and never tried to feign high drama.
Because he didn’t affect an unnatural, animalistic voice. I’m surprised more critics haven’t faulted Bale’s Batman for his voice. It’s a perverse rasp, and Batman is never heard saying more than a few short words at a time.
(The Joker: You just couldn’t let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible, aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won’t kill you, because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.
Batman: You’ll be in a padded cell forever.)
West, on the other hand, went super-thespian, toying with the music of his lines in the same corny but totally attractive way William Shatner did. West’s Batman is instantly recognizable by voice — the odd pauses, the professorial singsong, the Sherlock Holmes-like self-satisfaction. It was silly as hell, but it was smart storytelling, and that’s why Adam West has stuck with us for 40 years and Christian Bale is just another lug in a rubber costume.
